Anson Vasco Call (1834-1867)
}} Biography Anson Vasco Call, Sr. 1834-1867 Anson Vasco Call was born on July 9, 1834, at Madison Lake County, Ohio, the eldest of six children to Anson Call and Mary Flint. His parents had recently embraced the Mormon faith and soon found themselves in the forefront of church affairs encountering all the hardships faced by the other Saints during the early days of the Church in Missouri and Illinois. Anson Vasco dates the earliest recollections of his life to the persecutions of the Saints in Adam-ondi-Ahman. As the Saints were driven from place to place by the mobs, he often suffered from cold and exposure; he accompanied the Saints in all of the trying experiences of that period. He was baptized in Nauvoo, Illinois on November 20, 1842, at the age of eight years. With his parents, he viewed as a lad of ten years the bodies of the martyred Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum the patriarch. This experience stamped indelibly on his mind a memory of the early trials and sufferings of the Saints. At the age of fourteen, Anson Vasco came to Utah with his parents in1848. They left Winter Quarters on June 14, 1848, and traveled in the Brigham Young Company with his father as captain over twenty wagons. They arrived in Salt Lake City on September 19, 1848. The Calls soon moved north to the city of North Canyon, now known as Bountiful, Utah. On January 28, 1853, he married Charlotte Holbrook, the second child of Joseph and Nancy Lampson Holbrook, at her father's home. The Holbrook family and Call family had been closely associated for years through much of the persecution of the Saints in Missouri and Illinois. Anson Vasco and Charlotte had crossed the plains with their parents was teenagers.(Family histories say they had crossed together and were friends through the adventures that brought them to Utah). The young couple made their first home in Willow Creek, Box Elder County, Utah (now known as Willard, Utah). Charlotte's father Joseph Holbrook had staked out two hundred acres in July 1851 in this community. When he arrived, there was only one cabin belonging to Samuel Meachem. Joseph sold sixty acres to Anson Vasco and Charlotte. It was at Willow Creek that their first two children were born,Charlotte Vienne Call on November 7, 1853, and Anson Vasco Call II on May23, 1855. They then moved back to Bountiful where Charlotte gave birthto five more children: Joseph Holbrook Call, born February 23, 1857;Mary Vashtia Call, born January 29, 1859; Ira Call, born March 23, 1861;Hannah Call, born January 27, 1863; and Lamoni Call, born January 25,1865. As a young man, Anson Vasco was a diligent and ardent student and sought the company of books at every opportunity, learning the fundamentals from his educated mother Mary and her sister-teacher Hannah Flint Holbrook. He had superior business ability and often took charge of his father’s business when the latter was called away on colonizing missions for the Church. While still in his twenties, he was well known in Davis County and held several offices of trust in his church and community such as Justice of the Peace, selectman, school teacher, and ward clerk. November 10, 1856, Anson V. took a second wife, Elize Kathrine Kent. Her children were Chester Vinson, Sidney Banagor, and Ida. Anson was called on a mission for the church in 1857 to the Sandwich Islands. He had just reached San Francisco, California when summoned back by the news of the coming of Johnston's Army. He returned to his home to participate in the 'move south.' He was a scout on duty in the region of Green River, Wyoming. Once the threat of Johnston's Army passed, Anson Vasco took his families back to their homes in Bountiful. In 1864, he went on a mission to England and labored faithfully in Newcastle, England and in Bristol. He was Branch President at Sheffield at the time of his wife Charlotte's death, July 9, 1866, his thirty-second birthday. Due to slow transportation of the mail in those days, the sadness did not reach Anson Vasco for some time. He was informed that relatives had taken the children to rear as their own and felt that he could make no better arrangements if he were home. He felt that his missionary duties required him to remain in England. During the latter part of his mission, his labors were curtailed by sickness, and he was finally released to return home when his health became precarious. He did not live to reach his home in Utah and the loved ones who awaited his coming. He died August 4, 1867, on the Laramie Plains, near Rock Creek, Wyoming. It is recorded to have taken place between the first and second crossings of the Sweetwater (this is thought to be in the Laramie Plains on the Bitter Creek route, four hundred and twenty-three miles east of Salt Lake City). His friends and brethren, Heber P. Kimball and Guernsey Brown, ministered to him in his last sickness and burial. His body was exhumed the following spring and brought to Utah and given a resting place at the side of his wife Charlotte in the Bountiful Cemetery. This pioneer cut down untimely in the prime of manhood had nevertheless performed an active part in settling of the west, the building of the Kingdom of God, and spreading the gospel in a foreign land.